Bots and website protection

Robots (“bots”) are automated programs that visit websites, and they now account for more than half of all Internet traffic. Some robots are perfectly legitimate and well-behaved (think Google’s crawler), but a large share of them are rogue or simply unwanted: probing for security holes, aggressively scraping pages, or hammering servers recklessly - some botnets even leverage millions of hacked consumer devices to crawl the Internet. To protect your website against this abuse, PhotoDeck automatically filters out rogue robots, without hindering the legitimate ones.

How the antibot protection works

The antibot protection checks that a real browser - not a basic bot - is visiting your website. A legitimate visitor will at most briefly see a “security verification” page: it includes a hidden challenge that is automatically and quickly resolved by the visitor’s browser, without any captcha to solve. Once the check is passed, the visitor can browse freely without seeing that protection again.

Robots identified as outright abusive are not even given that chance: they are simply refused access to the protected pages.

Where the protection applies

The antibot protection is active on all pages of your website. It also protects the PhotoDeck admin space itself, and thereby your own PhotoDeck account.

PhotoDeck stats never include the legitimate robots we know about - please refer to the help on statistics for more details!

Legitimate robots are whitelisted

Known legitimate robots (like Google’s crawler) are whitelisted: they can access and index your website as usual, and no configuration is needed on your side. The antibot protection therefore has no impact on your website’s SEO.

This protection will keep evolving: bot creators learn over time how to circumvent barriers, so new barriers have to be designed. It is a cat-and-mouse game, and we stay on it!

If image theft is a concern, make sure you have an adequate watermark on your images - please refer to the help on watermarks for more details!

FAQ

• Do my clients have to solve a captcha to access my website?

  No. The “security verification” page includes a hidden challenge that is automatically resolved by a legitimate visitor’s browser, usually without them noticing anything. There is no captcha to solve.

• Will the antibot protection affect my Google ranking?

  No. Legitimate robots like Google’s crawler are whitelisted and can index your website as usual. The protection only targets rogue robots.

• A client reports being stuck on a “security verification” page

  Passing the verification is automatic and normally takes only a moment. If a legitimate visitor remains blocked or sees the verification page over and over again, please contact support so that we can investigate.

• Can I disable the antibot protection on my website?

  No. The protection is active on all PhotoDeck websites, and there is nothing to configure or deactivate on your side.